Upward, I ascend at a pretty even clip, but as I gaze up in anticipation at the aperture of hole I am rising out of, my nostrils are attacked. The smell is full and damp. As I attempt to keep from screaming, not from fright but perhaps from all of the pent up energy which wants to burst out of me like a geyser, I see what was the ceiling become the floor.
The dais I stand upon isn't very large, but I hear the gears lock softly into place with a slight hydraulic swoosh.
Green dominates the landscape around me. A myriad of tall, spiny grasses hang heavily before me in the thick air. I appear to be on a low, slow loping hill which I turn to see terminates in what appears to be a forest. Given the humidity, the bright yellow and red flower that comes into startling clarity a few yards away from me, or it's waxy stalk almost sagging under it's weight, I wonder if the word jungle might be more appropriate.
A bird warbles in long, high loops nearby. Everything seems moist, as if recently bathed in mist. I glance up and notice a figure standing erect, but almost trembling. They are female, or I'm relatively sure of this given their outline, a girl with brown hair. At first I think it may be Wren, but I decide the hair isn't long enough. Nor is it short enough to be Farah.
I see another person, about the same distance away though partially obscured by a few greasy-looking fronds of a spindly-looking bush whose rising shape reminds me vaguely of a mushroom cloud. This is the young boy from District Three, who meets my gaze, but then purposefully looks away and toward the sky.
It is cloudy and overcast, grays and whites tumbling together in a maze of endlessness. I swear I can feel the sun, but I certainly cannot see it. Standing out clearly in the sky, are the electronic numbers counting down; bright and impossible to miss. 00:41, 00:40, 00:39, 00:38, and so on.
A shiver crosses my body in the front and licks down my back. I do a complete sweep of my surroundings and see what could be a third person, further up the slope of the hill, and perhaps if I squint, I can make out a fifth. While there are not tall bushes everywhere like the one which half block my view of the boy from Three, the air is stagnant and makes spot sighting very difficult. There appears to be an opening off to my left, where I can tell the natural vegetation has been thinned, at least when compared to the forest. Still everything shimmers with glossy leaves, fecund and plump. Many types of grass intermingle to form a pattern of greens, beckoning one to test it's texture for themselves.
Just as I swing my eyes back toward the boy from Three, I am jarred by a deliciously close explosion. Did the shockwaves really just travel up my legs, or was it my imagination? Stunned, I hadn't even realized I'd been holding my breath and now suck in a lungful of saturated air. I see the kid from Three meet my expression once more, but I see his eyes are wide even from here, and I hear what I think might be a gasp from him. My eyes burn through the skies to see the countdown continue on it's way. 00:29, 00:28, 00:27. Just as I realize that despite the humidity, my entire body feels unreasonably cool. That's when the screaming began.
Shrill, high-pitched shrieks that were horribly close, reverberating through the thick air around me. I feel my jaw all but lock, and I attempt to open my mouth but I can't seem to. I decide that whoever it is, they're done…a new round of horrific, piercing screams lance through me from all directions, making every hair on my body stand up. The muscles in my legs are screaming at me to run, as the girl's howls turn into deep, undulating sobs and wet gasps. I am shaking now, I am sure of it, the back of my neck feeling as though a chill breeze had blown over it.
Back to the Arena's skies, I see the counter on it's one way march. 00:14, 00:13, 00:12, 00:11. I perceive my own anxious breaths, short and spiked as they expunge from my nostrils. Another female scream, undulating out through the air pierces me like a knife in the back. My fingers slip and slide around, I make tight fists as I see the clock tick of the seconds. 00:07, 00:06.
The girl keeps screaming her head off, her voice catching in her throat, but she keeps going. I decide to close my eyes, and just about the time I do, a cannon sounds off, ricocheting out through the arena.
My first step off my platform is so heavy, that I almost feel the muscles in my left leg seize up there, as if I were stuck in mud. I do not have time to even recognize this as I rush over the ground, legs pumping as I seem to leap through the air. I work evenly along the line of the hill, opposite from the openness, but at the same elevation as I'd begun. Like flashes of darkness, a few shapes rip past me like bees. My breath catches in my throat as I realize they are tearing ass for the jungle that this hill empties into.
Now I cannot control my body an longer it would seem, and it starts to angle that direction as well, but I make a concerted effort, gritting with the pain of it, to veer my body on it's same heading. The grass and ground is wet, pregnant with moisture. My tennis shoes spring off it as I dash as fast as I possibly can on my same route, like an arrow.
I slam my foot into a rock somewhere along the line and my entire right foot is throbbing and seeming to ring from the inside out. I am moving laterally across the gradual slope of the hill, remaining on the same bearing. Only vaguely aware of what is by me, all I know is that I don't want to go running headlong into the jungle. The slight hill I am on angles that direction but now I am moving past the reaches of the thickest portion of jungle.
Fortunately the grade is very slight, for running downhill can be extremely hard on the body. I follow the natural lie of the hill, allowing it to feed me down into a low-lying area. I'm flanked on one side by the jungle, the other, a bit of grass. Beyond the grass, the ground slopes down further, marking the lip of what seems to be a great depression, like a grassy crater, or wide circular dimple in the earth. Straight ahead what appears to be a moving stream. Beyond that more low lands, with an occasional marking of a few trees here or there.
I do not see the Cornucopia, of which I'm certain is somewhere in the Arena. As my thoughts barely register this, I hear the blast of a cannon and this spurs my body onward. I am not acting, I'm simply reacting. Someone has died already. I charge up to the stream, and to my surprise I see it moving a bit more swiftly than I'd have imagined. Once the second cannon sounds through the Arena, I have already leapt into the stream.
Under the water, it is quiet, marred only by the gentle rhythm of the water. I surface, shocked as to just how deep the water actually is. I swallow a bit and decide it's fresh, but I clamor out onto the far side of the bank sopping wet, and breathing anxiously as I spin around to see if I have anyone following me. It's the only advantage of openness in the wild. You can't hide, but neither can someone who might be trying to find you.
Two people are already dead, and that girl screaming bloody murder…she could've only accounted for one blast. Another might have gone off while I was in the stream. Incidentally I have no storage container, so I quickly retrace my steps and slurp up what must be four or five messy handfuls of fresh water. If it's poisoned, then I'm going to die. I can't think like that right now, I can't.
My pants are waterlogged and quite heavy, but I manage to move swiftly enough to a small copse of trees, and grasping one of the weedy but resilient tree trunks, toss myself further into the foliage. I am just a few feet in, and these trees aren't webbed together like the dark splotch still very much within my line of sight, the real jungle.
Here I crouch down and attempt to get my breathing and heart rate under control. From this vantage point, I can at least see no one is following in my tracks. To my left, lies the dense jungle which is mainly dominates the landscape on the other side of the stream, but I can see the waterway must travel through it. There is some jungle on my side of the stream…a little disconcerting. I do not want anything sneaking up on me. If I am going to die, I want to see what's going to kill me. I hope I am afforded that much dignity, at least.
Directly ahead lies the open path I'd used to get here. To my right and a little ahead, I follow the flow of the stream, until it disappears right out of sight. Adjusting my position amongst the trees, I squint and realize that it empties into a bowl of land, which I'd seen earlier. The land at my current elevation forms the lip of it, with steeper slopes on all sides, and the stream rather close to me, emptying down into it.
Looking ninety degrees to the right, I see that I can circumvent the basin bottom altogether, and that the land begins sloping upward again, on the far side of it. I decide to go ahead and call that direction East. It is completely arbitrary, but in an arena as varied as this one, I need to assign directions to keep my sanity.
I haven't seen hide nor hair of the Cornucopia. Perhaps it was up the hill from my starting post, or back in the direction I'm now calling west? It certainly was not in this direction, of that I was certain. As I console myself over this information another cannon blasts through the Arena, and I exhale long and slow through my nostrils.
I am freakishly aware that I have traded temporary safety now, for safety later. Though I'm not one of the first victims of the 63rd Hunger Games, how am I going to survive with no supplies, no weapons? This isn't at all what I'd envisioned for myself. Those of us who'd agreed with Knox's plan, had decided that keeping our alliance secret from the Careers was of the utmost importance. I already found the huge gaping hole in such a plan.
We have no strategy in the Arena. Surely the Careers had worked out some sort of idea of just what they were going to do, and how to go about it.
I have to move from my current position, but in every direction, I risk exposure. Staying here might be safe for the time being, although even that wasn't guaranteed. Somehow I know in my heart that beneath the dense layer of canopy and entwined trees, I will die. There's only on direction to go, so I set off due east.
Time has passed, although I'm not entirely sure how long. Ten minutes perhaps? I know there are at least five people dead by now, could be six if a cannon had gone off while I'd been in the stream. I had discovered a distortion to the direction I'm calling south. Everything had looked perfectly fine, as if the lowlands stretched onward, but there had been a flickering in a mass that rippled up and down right through mid-air. Picking up a couple of rocks, I had thrown them at the distortion, and they were all but incinerated. I saw a brief wave of a hexagonal pattern, like a bee's hive spread out on what was an invisible curtain, and then it was gone. It was the barrier keeping us in.
I didn't know the shape of the arena. It could be square, rectangular, circular, a triangle…who knew what shape it took. All I knew is that now, I was about 100 yards or so 'north' of the barrier. I had climbed up a gradual incline, but I had been nervous and by the time I'd turned around I could see a shape or two maneuvering their way down the opposite slopes and into the basin where the creek emptied. Had they seen me? Were they coming to kill me? From my current vantage point I couldn't see much beyond the opposing lip of the basin's edge, though I was well above it on my side. If I remained over here for too much longer, the possibility of being trapped with no weapon to defend myself was a real one.
Assuming I was near the edge of the Arena, that meant those in the middle would likely kill one another before they got to me…but those figures speedily descending into the basin's bottom, notified me I wasn't the only tribute in this sector. They could've been Careers, but it seemed a bit early for them to split off into two-man hit teams. I couldn't tell if they were large or small, female, male, or one of each. Much of this was due to the fact that I was obscuring as much of myself as possible, one knee on the ground, the other bent in front of me as I tried to see beyond the wide circular bowl of topography which opened before me and steadily wound down, and down.
A bird calls from overhead, and I feel my blood almost run cold. Looking up into the tangle of greens, I can see nothing but the spindly tops swaying very faintly—here on the ground, I cannot feel any breeze. That's when I turn and see more shapes, looking almost like their dancing now, level with me, on the far side of the basin.
Shit.
Oh shit. Without thinking, I just hop up from my position, and start clamoring through the trees, not even caring…I need to separate myself from anyone, as soon as possible. I don't see how many people were coming, but it had definitely been more than one. Careers hang in packs; this was the prevailing thought on my mind, even as I get myself entangled within some branches, and as I rip and pull my way through them, some bit of nature had whipped open a bit of my cheek. I could feel the wound, and putting a hand quickly to my face, I felt a little blood…but nothing major.
There was a sudden high, keening wail which split the air all around me. Waaaaaaahhhh, waaaaaaahhhh. The peculiar sound makes my blood run cold. Ahead of me, I see that the terrain is moving just slightly upward, but has gotten significantly more rocky.
Cleaved and scattered chunks of rock bite and stick down into the green, grassy hill like a bottom row of junky teeth from a mouth with multiple rows. There was no possible way I made that sound up, was there? Was there!?
Waaaaaaahhhh, waaaaaaahhhh. The squawk floods out into the air and clips back to my ears with alarming speed. Every hair on my body is rising, as I instinctively crouch down. What the hell is that! What is that! I take a few shaky, but deep breaths and finally I hear my heart beat, but I don't feel like my insides were being rattled around like ball bearings in a can of spray paint.
The third time, the waaaaaaahhhh, waaaaaaahhhh sound rings in my ears, I've decided it sounds like a bird. But this was very loud and considering that I couldn't see any birds in the trees, I wondered just what type of bird it could be?
I jerk up from my position, and though I feel dizzy, I spin around and ensure that I'm alone. I do not see anyone, or anything. My jaw feels clenched as I look around moving steadily toward the rocky hill before me. I have been in one place for too long though, I'm aware of this. While I might've been out of reach for a while, now other tributes would have surely fanned out.
Eeee-aaahhhh, eeee-aaahhh. This new call reverberates through the open air around me. The rocks do little to muffle the sound, instead send it resounding right back on top of me. That definitely sounds like the same bird, but was it? Unquestionably not the same call, but was it just one trying out various speech patterns, or were two talking back and forth? And if so…why? I'd seen the Hunger Games plenty. There was all kinds of shit that could kill you, besides your fellow tributes.
Movement to my left, just as I am eclipsing onto where the hill begins my would've been ascent. I turn steadily, and see a flash of movement. All green, blue, and gold in the direct sunlight, which I apparently have failed to notice has won over the yielding clouds. My hands ball into fists, though it is a reflex rather than a conscious action. I have no weapon whatsoever.
It bounces and sways, a brightly-colored thing not much bigger than a swan. It's curved neck and small head are the most beautiful shade of blue I've ever seen. A splash of white frames it's eye, like a fisherman's hook. It looks at me as it rustles slightly, and I notice there is a lot of feathers behind it, like it's dragging something behind it. I've never seen whatever the hell kind of bird this is, in my entire life. We don't have them in District Eight, that's for damned sure.
I watch it's beak open, black and small, and the same shivering eee-aaahhh, eee-aaahhh sound emanates. I stand there, perhaps stupidly, but this lovely colored but frightening bird hasn't moved any closer to me. It stalks one step forward, but then remains stoic there, framed in the sunlight. I see a glint of red in it's eyes, which how the hell am I to know if it's normal or not? All wild things in the arena aren't going to kill you…right? Maybe not…my mind flashes back to just last year when a few rabbits were caught and eaten by tributes.
For whatever reason, I take a step toward it, clapping my hands. The bird reacts instantly. Up it leaps, flying…or in some kind of graceful fall, squirrels away from me and landing softly in the lush carpet of green grass just ahead of the rocky hillside. It's head pivots on it's beautiful brilliant blue neck. Throat opening it lets out a ghastly cry, different from the other two. It conjures an image through my head of someone being butchered. I back away from the avian thing, keeping it well within my line of sight.
It leapt sideways once more and I notice it's wings which I realize are completely separate from it's long train of feathers that follow behind it. It's head it darting to and fro and I feel internal alarms in my head buzzing, but I cannot take my eyes off this thing.
"Hey!" comes a shout and all of my muscles freeze, eyes spinning and siphoning off the bright greens of my surroundings. Who said that?
Just as I see the shape in my peripheral vision, the bizarre bird lets off a low cluck, and hops into the air, gliding further and further back. Red-faced, with the sunlight glinting off his glasses, I see Arko from District Six breathing a bit heavily and certainly looking winded, he half-coughs and I see the bird flash out of sight amongst the rocks of the hill.
"Herod." He manages to get out, breathing in a rasp, "Sorry. I'm out of breath." Arko is a few inches taller than me, which already makes me like him a bit. Some of the people I hopefully wouldn't be seeing in here, seemed like they were almost a foot taller than me. He's thinner than I am, and pretty unremarkable all-around I have to say. Then again, he was standing before me, so he couldn't have been a total dunce. Usually those die at the bloodbath.
I hear myself saying, "No, it's alright man. Where's Wren?"
A look from the corners of Arko's eyes already tells me he hasn't seen his district-mate, and he confirms it soon enough. "The cornucopia is that way…" he exhales and coughs a little once more, turning to point northwest from here, though more west, than north.
Must've been up the hill I'd original started out on, and it was currently being obscured by distance, from the landscape emptying into the basin, and then a large blotch of thick trees, northwest from the basin, obscuring our view. Higher points yet lingered just to our north, or at least what I was calling north, and the rocky hill behind us to our east.
"What'd you get?" I say.
"Nothing." Arko tells me with a final clearing of his throat. "As soon as I saw it was the C-cornucopia, I ran for it. All I saw was someone rolling down the hill, I…I guess they tripped, and someone else was chasing after them." I eyes were a hazel brown color, and wide and magnified behind his glasses. "I didn't see who."
I was glad to see someone who was on my side…our side, whatever the hell I wanted to call it. A non-career, who had agreed to team up under the leadership of Knox.
"I can't believe that peacock is so jumpy," he says matter-of-factly, and as I follow his gaze I am also very much aware that we're exposed here. If Arko could see me, that means someone else, maybe someone who wasn't friendly, could see the both of us.
"The…what? Pee-cock?" It sounds moderately dirty, but…I had never heard of such a thing in my life.
"The peacock." He said, raising one eyebrow as if I were a complete idiot. "Expected all the animals in here to be killers. Guess everyone gets lucky once in a while."
"I heard the cannon a few times. See anyone dead?" I converse, although my eyes keep darting back to the hill where this…peacock had retreated, as well as feeling like maybe someone was putting the nock of an arrow against the bowstring, my backside the target.
Arko shook his head, and removes his glasses, wiping them off on his shirt. "No. I was moving too fast to see much of anything. I need a weapon, but I need my life more."
Perhaps it was just my hyper-sensitivity at the moment but I let off a small laugh, and found myself nodding. "Know what you mean. I may be unarmed, but I'm alive."
There were plenty of people I'd have rather seen alive and well, but I got Arko, and I wasn't about to lose an ally. "Knox never hammered out a strategy." I say as the pair of us start walking northward, to where the trees to our west thicken up a bit, and might have a better shot of obscuring us from onlookers from the other sides of the basin on the same level ground as us.
"If we just try every man for himself, the Careers are sure to win." Arko tells me, stopping and glancing at me easily. "I think there's water down that slope."
"Oh yeah," I say, exhaling and though still anxiety ridden, allow myself to calm down. "There's a stream, it's pretty deep in parts."
"Really." Arko sounds surprised. "Which way is it?"
I hear an very audible click. My ears being assaulted by it, even if it was such a little sound. It was distinctive, oddly familiar and yet, I put it out of my mind as I turn back, and point in the direction I was calling very south, and west. "Back that way, but I think we'd better head further up. The Careers could be there by now."
A flash of movement from the corner of my eye as I am spinning back to face Arko, when I feel a jolt of pain hammer just down from my shoulder. I know my brows knit together as I face Arko, whose face has turned positively vicious, like a were a demon or something.
It's when he yanks the knife out of my arm that a blossom of fiery pain explodes. A flash of steel in the sunlight and I reflexively throw my hands up, the blade biting and gouging into my left, the silver tip of the switchblade having been deflected, for it's target had been my neck.
It isn't until I spin away, lowering my body stance, that I see Arko rushing forward to meet me, trying to connect with something extra vital on his third try. Funny how your brain takes a moment to catch up with some facts. His eyes blazing behind his glasses, teeth gritted with a face fit for a horror movie; He's trying to kill me.
A sidestep and I snatch my arm back from the air where it surely would've been torn open by the switchblade. My mind reels as this is no deterrent for him. Arko thrusts forward with a savage growl and I feel pure adrenaline roar up from my stomach and into every facet of my body. First I feel his knife gouge into my forearm, slicing through the layers easily.
We both snag around each other's limbs, my bleeding hand vice like on the wrist of his knife-wielding hand, my other balled up and I make a weak, glancing connection to the side of his neck.
Swirls of violent color, like an angry oil painting come to life. I usurp the knife, momentarily and I feel it slide into his stomach. A blast of energy and the world rings around me as his fist connects high on my cheek. Feeling like someone has just thrown a brick at my head, so I scrabble for the knife, but he's thrown his hand before my face, fingers needling for my eye sockets. I snap my eyes shut.
Everything black and red behind my eyelids, I grope for the knife and my fingertips discover it in my blindness. A twist of my body and I latch off, swinging underhand and bury the knife once more into his stomach. My digits are slippery and wet, but as he doubles over, I don't have any control over my body anymore—I react. My arm swings up and I blast my elbow and forearm down onto Arko's backside as he drops to a knee.
Wham! I bury my foot into his ear, and his glasses go spinning off and I see him eat the ground. I launch myself down onto him, and I see his eyes burn at me. I barely recognize he's retaken possession of the switchblade. It flashes like a prism's light but I catch his wrist and feel my strength bear and snap back against his, preventing further assault.
Arko makes a low noise, which turns into something like a yip. I wind up and slam my fist toward his face, and I feel one of his canines rip into my knuckle as this pain is new, and manages to reach through the veil providing the hormones through my adrenal glands. Still now I plant my alternate fist, the bleeding one, into the side of his neck as he lets off a scream.
He bucks as I go spilling off him, but somehow now in possession of the switchblade. On all fours I launch myself at my attacker. I hear a whistle, a spit, a scream, I am not even aware as the switchblade descends from my fist down at him. It jars off his palm, and into his forearm, ripping open new ribbons of blood. Again I swing it down, all my fire focused to the tip of the knife as I bury it into his clavicle. His eyes are so wide, shock and fear chiefly shining through them. Obviously he'd expected this encounter to go another way. I'd been fucking aiming for his neck, but he'd twisted, the little worm, and I loose grip on the blade as he rolls away, and scrambles to all fours, hacking.
I'm looking at the bright sky, so I scramble over like a fiddler crab and see through narrowed slits in my eyes, him hobbling up to his feet. Snarling, I don't know how but everything around me filters out. The sunlight, the trees, the grass.
Furious, I bury the switchblade into his lower back, up to the cross guard and he lets out a peeling yell. Somehow this sound only eggs me on, and I drive the knife again into his back, a little further up. Blood is saturating his t-shirt, as it is my own, but once I'd driven the blade's entire length between his shoulder blades, my own extremities beginning to scream with injury, I saw him collapse, and paw at the ground before him.
My vision isn't exactly dim, it's just focused like a laser beam. I kick him once, then again. He splutters over onto his back, face a mask of blood. His hands are waving and scraping at me as I slide down onto my knees, and stab him right in his chest once again. His eyes are wide saucers, his lips curved off in a grimace of shock. The blade's length is not very long, though my brain spins this off like useless information as I find my arm hooking down again. Once more. No noise as the blade gashes into his body. Twice more. Now he lets out a deep gasp. Three times more. Blood sprays over my forearms and in between my fingers. I don't know whose are whose any longer.
A deep, ragged gasping ushers weakly in front of me. Coiled and bunched like a cat on it's last life, I am relentless. After I believe two, or perhaps three more thrusts from the switchblade, Arko begins to move less, and less. How many was that? I've lost count. One of his eyelids is half closed, the other eye is wide and staring up at me. His mouth is sputtering and is making weak movements as I jam my switchblade into him one last time to the cross guard. Swallowing, pain from my own body begins to win in the struggle of attention. My hand is throbbing, my upper arm is if anything, positively pulsating and I realize entirely how much pain I'm in.
I see the bone handled switchblade in my hand. Both are shaking and slick with blood. I try to let it go, but the muscles in my hands are seized so tightly around it, I simply move it down and away from Arko. Amidst my pain, I wonder why he isn't thrashing around, or twitching even. He's simply still, like he's stopped.
I am bathed in violence, and realizing that a vast majority of the gore is not my own, something inside of me pinches, and I feel like I scream, but I'm sure no sound comes out. I switch off Arko and, on my ass, take inventory of how rapidly my heart is beating, how shallow my breaths are coming. My jaw is clenched, and as I concentrate every molecule of my energy to unhinge it, I succeed and realize I've also dropped the knife.
Seeing Arko move just a little bit from the corner of my eye makes me want to cry out, to look away, but I cannot. My eyes, or something deeper inside of me is fixated on him. The blood all over his chest looks too dark to be real, staining his once light gray t-shirt. Rosettes of darkest color dot across his chest like a demented constellation. Blood seeps from these most grievous of injuries over his saturated clothing. Oh my God. I don't even believe in him, but…oh my God.
I shuffle slowly to my feet, and expect to be dizzy, but I am largely even-minded, not only that, but aware. Now everything pops back into view at once, the jade colored grass, the blue sky, the sunlight roving over the shroud of blood that Arko has become. In the light of day like this, there's no where for the violence to hide. It is tattooed on my mind. Just as I begin to realize what's happened, the gust from a cannon sends my eyes darting to my surroundings. No peacock, just the nearby trees, drooping sadly in the absence of the wind, having borne witness to such a thing.
My sinuses open like I am crying, or about to…but I'm not. At least I think I'm not. For one of the first times in my life, I actually smell blood. Its sticking to me, not letting go. His, mine…its on me now. Wincing, I retrieve the switchblade and though it's much lighter-weight than a hunting knife I'd much prefer, it was a knife nonetheless. My thumb moves to back of the cross bar and pushing down, the blade wags to one side, no longer taut. I snap it back into the bone handle with a click, that makes Goosebumps erupt over my forearms, even through the blood.
I'm wiping my lips off on the back of my hand, and I have no idea why. I've just killed a man. A boy…a man? Whatever he was, Arko was dead. Was he older than me? I think he might've been, but right now that didn't even matter. I'd killed him. He'd lied to me, straight to my face. It was all an ambush. Just one which had backfired on him. A shudder rolls it's way through my body and I believe I shiver, despite the humid clime.
Though I want nothing to do with it any longer, I watch myself detached-like, somewhere from above. I am rummaging around in Arko's pockets, and discover about six inches square of burlap, and some string. In his other pocket, three things, round and wrapped in plastic. What? Through the blood which coats one, and spatters onto the other two, I think they might be candies…or mints. I slide them into my pockets, and rolling back off the carnage that I myself was responsible for, I notice Arko's glasses on the ground. One lens is cracked, the other in-tact. I don't want to take them, I want nothing to do with any of what just transpired…but I see myself pocketing them as well. Maybe it was Roman who was making me do these things. Sure, lets blame Roman.
My arm pounded, but for now my t-shirt was sealing the gash shut reasonably well. The cut on my hand, and the other on the top of my forearm were relatively superficial. The one on my hand might've been able to use stitches, but I wasn't going to hold out hope for that. I glance back toward the rocky hill, to where the bird apparently called a peacock had disappeared. I could more or less make out that the hill crested not far off, and perhaps it might've been a play of the sunlight, but I believed I might've seen that same glimmer of a bee hive pattern. The barrier again, only this time to what I am calling east.
Why couldn't Arko have jumped me right next to the barrier? I had quicker reflexes than he'd anticipated. I could've just knocked him into it. If people were anything like that rock I'd thrown earlier, I would have been spared from having to…having to…take care of him.
Why should I feel so rotten! I yell at myself as I swallow and take a few steps away from Arko's body, heading north. He is the one who tricked me. He lied to me. As soon as I'd been pointing out the direction of the creek, he tried to kill me. That was the truth. He'd probably thought I was going to be easy pickings here, all by myself. My multiple gashes throbbed and reminded me humbly, that I hadn't escaped without a scratch.
Fighting Arko, I'd won…but I would not say I'd beaten him 'easily'. Nothing about that had been easy; the physical side to it was simplest. True surprise had been on his side, but still if I'd not been stronger and quicker, things might've turned out different. What would happen if I had to deal with a Career?
Yes I had a knife, but it was a push button switchblade. Lightweight and easy to carry…but rather wimpy when you compare it to a good hunting knife. Fighting the Careers with it, would be like bringing a toothpick to a swordfight.
Given the blade's small size, I did not look forward to having to dispatch anyone else with it. Arko hadn't died well at all. I attempt to put the pictures of his bloody, ravaged corpse from my mind but naturally this only makes them all the more difficult to ignore. How many times…did I stab him? Starting at my elbows and rolling up to my chin, I get a shiver and I clear my throat and force myself not to rehash it.
Directly in front of me, and to the 'east', the land shifts up again, and with more startling an angle than the rock-strewn hill right by where I'd left Arko's corpse. I can see, though I need to squint a little, there is another huge hill off to my northwest. Seems like the landscape dips down into a valley to what I have assigned to be the 'north'. Maybe I ought to back track the way I came. Past Arko, past the rocky hill, circumventing the basin bottom as I had before, and back to the creek?
If anything Arko said had been the truth, it meant the Cornucopia was near the top of the hill I'd begun these Games on. The creek wasn't a whole lot closer to this imaginary tract of land I envision with all sorts of weapons gleaming, but it's a little closer than my current position. I'm relatively sure I am in the southeastern portion of the arena. Stay here, and I may be able to avoid more encounters. Then again, Arko had been to the Cornucopia, or I could only assume he had, given his knife, and he'd found me already.
A low, dark feeling takes root in my brain. I realize that what I'd just done, it'd all had been captured on camera. Like any other year when I watched the Hunger Games off and on with my family, people in Panem had just seen me violently, sloppily, dispatch one of my fellow tributes. Sure he was a traitor, he'd lied to me flat out. But I'd still taken his life. You can't get any more personal than that.
Does this mean Wren couldn't be trusted either? Seems about right. Farah had forewarned me despite the fact that she was anything but ugly herself, there were pretty girls. No girl as funny and pretty as Wren could've been for real. Does this mean that anyone who I believed I'd be aligned with, is going to turn on me? It was difficult to envision Knox being so underhanded. I'd find it hard to see Haw or Cynthia from District Ten, pulling what Arko had. Same went for Lurie from Five. The only person I was reasonably sure I could trust was Farah.
She might be dead. This thought made my feet feel heavier, but as I moved northward, I had to understand it could be the truth. Farah included or not, I didn't know any of these people; not really. I feel like I know Arko now, but that had not been a pleasant discovery.
Right around half a dozen people other than Arko, were dead. This meant I was one of what, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen tributes left? The number was still staggering, but hopefully some of my competitors would kill one another off before long.
Why hadn't that thing apparently called a peacock attack me? It was true that not all creatures in the Arena were deadly…but it seemed capable enough. Then the answer came to me. Because there were other things in here, way worse than a peacock. I flinched at this realization and took a 360 degree stock the grounds around me. I was more in the open here, though a thin veil of scraggly trees still held up to my left and obscured the basin bottom I wasn't about to go exploring. It was a gut instinct on my part. Could've been awesome down there, but escape was very tricky. Seemed like heading down those steep embankments was surely going to be a one-way trip.
The next hour or two go by without too many difficulties. I brushed up against something or other than is making almost all of the exposed skin on my left arm pink and itchy. It wasn't a burning, but just annoying enough so that it never really went away. A huge black spider had fallen down on me, but I'd pitched it off quickly. To my shock it'd come running back toward my feet, but I stomped it several times, until it was a mess of black legs and goo. I was certain that getting bitten by one of those, wasn't something I cared to experience.
I notice that the sun has continued it's trek across the sky, and I wonder why I haven't seen anyone else? Of course if they're keen to kill me, better that they stay away. I hear another cannon blast off as I begrudgingly decide to head up for higher elevation. I am exposed on the side of the steeper hill, but once I'm up there there's no second guessing. Once or twice I lost my footing, and I even took a small tumble. Thankfully I'd caught myself before I went spinning and falling all the way back down to where I'd killed Arko.
Nearer the edges of this plateau I've reached, there are no shrubs or trees to conceal me. Surely I'd stick out like a sore thumb to anyone who might be glancing my direction from any of the pocketed areas below. One side of the plateau empties down into a valley, the walls far too steep to try and climb down. On the other side of the valley, directly across from the plateau I'm on, I see another level flattening of ground. Over there, I see a dense high jungle which climbs at an elevation eclipsing even my own. I realize just how tired I am already getting. No water, no food…except for the few candies I'd picked off Arko. I hadn't even tasted one yet, for I'd remembered Roman's advice.
I gasp at seeing the silver parachute spiraling lazily though the late afternoon sky. Here on the plateau, I've moved myself back far enough to the tree line, so as not to be seen from areas below. My initial reaction is to go scanning for tributes, until I realize it must be for me. Mouth dry, I resist the urge to climb up a tree and nab it. Better to wait for the thing to glide down to the ground, than risk injury. What can Roman have possibly gotten for me!? My stomach is cramping a bit, and the muscles in my body feel rubbery by the time I see it dash onto the ground. Bending over to pick it up, two things happen.
I am overwhelmed with a dense of dizziness and I crash to one side, the world spinning around me. Looking down at my arm where my t-shirt is still stuck into the stab wound I'd incurred there about five inches below my right shoulder, I see the fabric has essentially worked as a band aid. Secondly, the package is rectangular, and not very large. I suppose a gun could be in there. My mind is a bit slippery at the edges, like it had been greased.
It isn't until I rip open the package, that I realize I have a sponsor! Maybe just one…but I actually have a sponsor. Instead of a firearm, loaded and deadly, I see a bottle. Removing it from it's flimsy housing, I see that it is a plastic bottle, ribbed, and about 12 or 14 ounces. It has a screw on cap and is filled with a clear liquid. Turning it over in my hands, I can tell by the way the bubbles run up and down the inside, it's water.
Just what did this mean? The only fresh water available to me was the creek I'd jumped into so early on? There was no water around here? The water in the creek was poisonous, and this was drinkable? That I needed to go looking for water, somewhere? These thoughts went tumbling around in my head. There wasn't anything else in the packaging…just the plastic bottle of water.
There wasn't a lot of it really. I could've sucked it all back right now, though I twist off the cap, and take one nice, long swallow. The water sooths my parched mouth and I almost swig some more, but with a shaky hand, cap it back off. I've already drank about a fourth, or maybe fifth if I'm being generous, of the stuff. As I sit there with my legs out before me, looking a bloody mess, I decide that the real gift here, is the bottle…not the water. It's lightweight so it won't slow me down much, and I have transportable means of collecting and keeping water.
As the sunlight is cresting away from me, I realize that the haphazard directions I'd assigned to the arena, just might have been correct. This would place me at the eastern edge of the landscape, where late afternoon was threatening to turn into early evening. I see a flock of birds spiraling around and coming to roost in the lofty jungle across the valley from me. Strange birds…they aren't moving like anything I've ever seen before.
I am hungry, but I am not starving. If that peacock really was harmless, I should've tried to kill it with my switchblade. Up here, I could hear a few things in and amongst the trees, but I was loathe to enter them. Spiders, and things way worse, surely dwelled within. I took one last small swallow of water, and I close my eyes. Surely the cameras are no longer on me, I'm not doing anything remotely interesting.
For all that I've done, and for as tired as I feel, not a whole lot transpired today. Ran…killed a guy…climbed a hill or two. Discovered what a peacock was. Though I can't reconcile Arko as being easy on me, in the large scheme of things, I hadn't had to deal with anything else that was intense. Some of my fellow tributes were dead. Others still might be fighting for their lives as I sat there, or had to overcome far worse obstacles and I had. I need to go hunting for something while I still have some strength, and the nutrition and energy I'd received from breakfast this morning hadn't completely exited my system.
Still I can't seem to get off my ass. I watch the sunlight slip behind the jungle the peculiar birds are nesting in, and twilight comes on me slowly, and yet suddenly. It is hardly dark, but the shadows cast around me now are long, and treacherous-looking. My upper right arm still hurts, though now more stiffly, like an overworked muscle, than a fresh injury. My left hand stings too, but though it looks ghastly, my body has clotted the blood. I find myself blowing on the wound, which makes it sting. Why? I don't know. I am finding it increasingly hard to know why I am doing anything.
I realize that yes, my first day has been tough, but hardly tremendous. I had to kill a would-be ally, sure…but if it weren't for him, how would I even know I was really in the Arena? I hadn't seen the Cornucopia…I had not witnessed any other tributes. Oh wait…those people who'd gone down into the circular basin bottom. See, I am already finding it easy to forget shit like that. It's going to get worse. Surely. I know intrinsically that if my first day hadn't been too awful, tonight might bring new terrors; tomorrow I might die. Easy to say at least, I would have wished for a more intense first day. Maybe then fortune, karma…whatever it was, would pass me over because I'd suffered so intensely at the start. There was nowhere for it to go, but down.
Dad is proud of me, somewhere. He'd told me so. Was he still proud of me, covered in someone else's blood? Before the games, I had envisioned what it might be like to slit a throat or even stab someone with a hunting knife. Of course this little switchblade was hardly a hunting knife. Arko's death had been untidy…sloppy even. This makes me want to wash the blood off me, but I'm not about to waste the bottled water on something so trivial.
Mom loved me, and knew I could do this. Tena told me to trust my instincts. Etcher said to let it all roll off my back…it was only a game. It was Dyne's words, that I now clung to as I sat there on the ground, exposed, perhaps stupidly-so, on the plateau. You're so much stronger than I am, Herod.
Even with the sun rapidly sliding out of view over the western horizon at the far other end of the Arena, it is still quite warm. Fortunately some of the mugginess which had existed earlier was gone. My stomach growls up at me as I let go some of my heaviest of thoughts, and examine just how quiet it is. I am without fire, shelter, or really any food to speak of, save the hard candies I'd picked off of…the District Six tribute. I didn't want to acknowledge him as a person any longer, I truly did not. I was running with the wolves now, I must disassociate myself—I had to try.
Hearing a soft noise, I pass it off initially, until I determine that it seems to be something that isn't trying to make any noise.
My internal alarms go springing off wildly, and the knife's blade is clicked out instantaneously. The shadows gather and make it extremely difficult to know where the noise is coming from. I could risk standing up, but presently I ought to be obscured in the shade of the nearby bushes I'm sitting between.
Perhaps thirty of the most intense seconds of my life pass. Every muscle in my body is seized up and bunched tight, like a snake about to strike. I draw my legs back, and eventually I am down on one knee, turning slowly from one side to the other as I hear more small things. It didn't quite sound like bird or a mammal…
A rolling cackle rolls down upon me from overhead. I flinch and slash out with the switchblade, hearing myself breathe. What the fuck! It didn't sound human, but that doesn't assuage my fears at all. Something cackles at me from overhead once more, and that's it. Hurt or not, I jump up and begin backing away from the bushes and trees. In the deepening twilight, I can't see what lurks in the shadows.
The sound is positively grotesque, whatever the hell it is, and as it sounds off again, this time closer, my fears get the best of me and I turn and run.
Dark blues, purples, greens, blues all whir past me as I dart across the plateau, hearing that awful noise now for the fourth time. It's chasing me.
Blindly I pick up speed, half-tripping over myself I manage to keep myself from falling flat onto my face. A higher, more feral sound ushers in from my right, and I spin crazily toward it, very aware I am still holding the switchblade. This newest noise is more like a dog's bark, except I've never heard a dog like that.
I'm out of here. I can't stand it…whatever it is, it's not going to catch me without a chase. I run headlong around the bushes coming up on me, hearing the bark, and I perceive the cackle again. Help me.
I feel blind. I tear across the landscape, whipping into a few brambles on my way, but I don't even care. Something is chasing me, and I'm not going to let it find me.
I crash terrifically into something big and solid, and I go spinning to the ground, my switchblade knocked from my hand. I hear voices, and I go scrambling on the ground for my weapon, to no avail. Something slams into my side, and I go sprawling to the ground.
I roll over, and see a distinctly human shape looming over me in the shadows. Out of the corner of my eye, I see they aren't alone. A flash of metal coming at me and I have no recourse. Just like that, I'm going to die.
